Many situations exist in which the inability to bridge a language barrier can have drastic consequences. For example, medical professionals may need to communicate information regarding health or treatment to patients who speak different languages. If a patient cannot understand the information being communicated, he or she may miss or misunderstand critical information regarding, for example, a regimen for taking prescription drugs. Failure to adhere to the proper regimen can result in further health problems, contagion or even death in some cases.
Because trained human interpreters are not always available to assist in such communications, some such situations may rely on the assistance of an automatic language translation device. However, the capabilities of typical automatic language translation devices are still quite technologically limited and thus may still result in miscommunications. There is therefore still a danger in using such devices to assist in the communication of critical information.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus for semantically and grammatically correct natural language translation in a finite domain.